Kathy Tran
Audio By Carbonatix
It’s not getting any easier out there, folks. In just the first three weeks of the new year, we’ve already seen a number of local outposts close down for good due to mounting costs of food, labor and everything in between. Two sandwich shops, the 53-year-old New York Sub near SMU and Oak Lawn’s The PoBoy Shop, which only opened last August, both fell victim to the disturbing trend.
The annual foodie hotspot, Taste of Addison, was canceled by the City Council just a few months away from its April dates. The chains aren’t holding up either. Salad and Go closed all its Texas and Oklahoma locations, including 18 in the Dallas area.
All that being said, it’s unfortunately no surprise that the owners of Heim Barbecue confirmed with Fort Worth Report that they are closing their West Magnolia location on Feb. 1 due to the cost of a needed rebuild, just months ahead of its 10-year anniversary. The company is also transferring its East Dallas Mockingbird location to a franchisee.
New Beginnings
That leaves co-owner Will Churchill and founders Travis and Emma Heim with one last Fort Worth outpost in the River District, plus a newly opened location in Weatherford to manage. Additionally, the team plans to rebrand its mobile Heim food truck into Heim Pig Stand, a cheaper, even more informal iteration of the same Texan flavors.
We’ve been singing the praises of Heim for years. In 2023, they took home the Best Grilled Cheese award for their fantastic brisket sandwich. Two years before that, a special $2 corn dog deal cemented our city as the corn dog capital of the world, or at least Texas.
The Pig Stand
Churchill told Fort Worth Report that if everything goes well, a run of small brick-and-mortar Pig Stands might be in order, but that would appear to be some time in the future. Testing for the new menu and locations will be a slow roll; they’ll be open for lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, beginning March 4. The first location will be on a plot of land owned by Churchill in Fort Worth’s Westland neighborhood, where the stand will stay for three weeks before moving on to a new location.
Where will the next hog residency be? We don’t know yet, but hopefully closer to Dallas proper. Wherever it does end up, it’ll be far friendlier to your wallet than the standard Heim locations. We’ll have to check back in to try for ourselves once the new stands open in March, or perhaps plan a “work from home” day out in Fort Worth.
